Excel Tip: Looking for Inexact Matches to Search Criteria

Excel Tip:  Looking for Inexact Matches to Search Criteria

When you use Excel's Find or Replace features, you'll sometimes want to perform searches for near matches to criteria. For example, if you're searching a long list of names, you may not remember exactly how a person's name is spelled.

Normally, Excel looks for the literal string you enter in the ‘Find’ text box. However, you can ease that restriction by incorporating wildcard characters into your search string. A wildcard is simply a placeholder that represents other characters.

The “?” wildcard character is used in place of any single character and the “*” wildcard character is used to represent multiple characters. For example, the criteria "Sm?th" finds both Smith and Smyth. A search string of "S*n" will find Sean, Shawn, Steven, and Stephen.